I had my annual performance review yesterday. It turned out well, but they changed the review form this year so you have like 50 different [redundant] essay questions to answer. When all was said and done, with both my answers and my manager’s answers to all the questions, the form was 26 pages long in single-spaced 12 point Times New Roman.

That’s like a novel.

When he put the finished form on the table in front of me, I thought it was a magazine. It’s huge. Crazy. I know the review process is in a constant state of flux, so hopefully they’ll flux a few of the questions, at least the redundant ones, out. Yow.

I’m still working on the stuff for the next version of Solvent. It’s going to interact more with the Windows shell, though, which is all low-level stuff, so I’m having to go back and re-learn C++ (and, subsequently, the managed extensions to it) so I can interface my C# add-in code with the shell. It’s turning out to be a lot more difficult than I first anticipated, though, and I’m learning way too much about how the shell does things (or doesn’t, as the case may be) and the C++ required to mix managed and unmanaged C++. I’ve had a couple of people at work look at it and they’ve offered some general help/direction, but no concrete examples or solutions. I’m even considering farming it out. I’ll be glad when it’s done.